St. Mary’s & LVCC

When St. Mary’s Episcopal Church was built 128 years ago, it was the home to “Cousin Jack” families who came to work the Soudan Mine. The lovely little building had fallen into disrepair over the past few years and a group of interested people formed the Lake Vermilion Cultural Center to save the oldest building in Tower. Since Tower has no cultural center, auditorium, senior center, youth center, lecture hall, concert hall, child care center or a large meeting space for the charter school in Tower, our LVCC was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and started raising funds to save the building. We were gifted the church by the Episcopal Church in Minnesota and we recently moved her to the historic center of Tower, MN..

We purchased land, hired an architect and started raising funds to make this dream come true. To this point, we have raised close to over $300,000 with our small fund raisers and by two or three private grants from local citizens.

Our story is quite amazing in that until the summer of 2015, there was not one penny of government or major grant money in our funding. At that point, the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB) gave us a matching grant to build a storage building/carriage house which is architecturally compatible with St. Mary’s Hall. The IRRRB also granted funds to help move St Mary’s Hall.

At this time we need to raise new funds to complete our project and provide our greater community with this much needed facility. We have been holding educational programs for several years now as well as our popular Midsummer dinner concert which is held each June. We have featured the countries of Great Britain, Sweden, Slovenia, Austria, Italy, and Finland. In 2016 featured France, the Voyageurs, and Native Americans. Community support has grown to the point that our last five years have been sell-outs.

Your help is greatly needed and we ask that you support us today so that we can finish our project. St. Mary’s now sits on her new site, the carriage house is built and awaits new siding.